HIST6101: The Near East to 1200BC: The Earliest States

Dr Yagmur Heffron

The module attempts to cover the history of all areas of the Near East from c.3000-c.1200 B.C.; this includes Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, the Levant and Iran. Because of the disposition of the written sources the emphasis is primarily on Egypt and Mesopotamia; and falls into roughly three chronological phases: c.3000-2000, 2000-1600, 1600-1200. The following aspects are covered: development of the Egyptian state and the historical events of the Old, Middle and New Kingdom; the evolution of urban societies in southern Mesopotamia, development of the Sumerian civilization; the establishment of the Old Akkadian empire succeeded by the bureaucratic empire of the third dynasty of Ur; the struggle for political pre-eminence between the various city-states of southern and northern Mesopotamia and Syria; the movements of population groups; the small-state system of Central Anatolia and the subsequent development of the Hittite state from small kingdom to empire and its sudden collapse.